Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 25, 2011

SLLCONF featured incredible entrepreneurs on stage to put those ideas to rest (watch, for example: Aardvark , Grockit , Dropbox , PBworks ). It may be hard to remember that there was a time when people in the agile software development community thought Lean Startup was incompatible with agile practices. We’re just getting started.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Silicon Valley Lean Agile 146

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

(for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. This is the speed-up-or-slow-down moment.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2019

Product Hunt is a community-based website that allows makers and marketers to launch their products or services and get in touch with their first real users. The community can jump start products through votes and (honest) reviews, which are essential in the early stages of campaigns. Your product is not going to be perfect.

Campaign 127

Campaign Product Technical Review Social Media 127

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. No vanity metrics should be looked at.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Customer personas are often talked about in marketing and product design, but they’re almost never done well. Cooper framed personas as a way of avoiding designing for an “elastic” user, and thus cementing some sort of common properties across segments to aid cohesive design strategy.

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 19, 2017

So, too, should the Test Manager take direction from their cohort of subject matter experts: Product Managers, Technical Directors, Web Designers, and Customer Service Representatives.”. The metrics aren’t the same and neither are the strategies…they all need to be aligned to create a consistent user experience.”.

Chad 90

Chad Analytics Technical Review Framework 90

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does. First, he writes it nice and clear.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

One such technique is called Five Whys, which has its origins in the Toyota Production System, and posits that behind every supposedly technical problem is actually a human problem. Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Applied to a start-up, heres how it works.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Shoutout to @PeepLaja and the rest of the CXL team for making this happen year after year. Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success. Understand: funnel analyis to identify opportunities – 75K people / day werent able to login because of a bad login screen design. Engagement.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

User personas are often talked about in marketing and product design, but they’re almost never done well. Cooper framed personas as a way of avoiding designing for an “elastic” user, and thus cementing some sort of common properties across segments to aid cohesive design strategy.

Software Review 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. Its Woz-inspired creativity set the tone for the rest of the project.&#

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are long-term bets on the development of a new line of business, a new technology platform, or the creation of a new market. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

YoungUpstarts

JULY 7, 2017

Well designed consumer research will highlight the most valuable customers, and what is motivating them to buy, which is the necessary insight managers need to keep the best products on the shelves and eliminate the rest. All too often media spend is a blanket purchase with little precision and even fewer metrics on returns.

Green 133

Green Demand Dividend Metrics 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens. It promotes rapid iteration.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

but rest assured they would be. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. A Fundraising Survival Guide [link] Raising money has a mysterious capacity to suck up all your attention.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

You can easily take from it whatever makes sense for your business, and leave the rest. While the customer development framework of Four Steps is universally relevant, The Entrepreneur’s Guide updates its practices for modern startups. You can easily take from it whatever makes sense for your business, and leave the rest.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The old models are broken, and we do not yet have new models to replace them.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time. Instead of waiting for that to happen, make sure there is a mechanism for sharing refactoring lessons with the rest of the team. Why dont they just learn to do it right the first time?

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Apple has a track record of creating lots of interesting enabling infrastructure, like Quicktime and Bonjour, which sometimes become key to their products and othertimes not. My guess is they have lots of people constantly working on interesting new tools for their designers to play with. And that's fine. Great post Eric.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Recently, I designed a strategic marketing campaign for a company called Help Scout —a helpdesk software tool. Those sessions also reinforced another key component of the campaign: a design-led approach. That’s because Help Scout considers itself a design-led company. Designing in real time. Acting quickly. Look at Ikea.

Campaign 134

Campaign Marketing Design Differentiation 134

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

.&# In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software. Read the rest. Weve got slides , video , audio and twitter commentary.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 14, 2015

Instead of taking one big swing with the launch of a new product—devoting months to the design of one technical feature or spending years in stealth mode developing a product without evidence that customers want it—it is an iterative approach to learn who the customer actually is, and what’s honestly required to delight them.

Stealth 60

Stealth Engineer Leadership Design 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. As you face new challenges, successes and failures - please share what you learn with the rest of us. My realization for 2010 is that Im already in the game. Lets get 2010 underway.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

This technique rests on three things: identifying the kinds of work that need to get done, creating the right type of teams for each kind, and steering the company by allocating resources among them. Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. This is a self-published book, originally designed as a companion to Steves class at Berkeleys Haas school of business. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

So if youre new, consider not paying any attention to the rest of this post, and just diving into the archives, if you havent already. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product. hey eric, love the blog.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

A few years ago, people started talking a lot more about User Experience (UX) as a new crossover discipline between design and engineering, and our experience at Return Path has been that UX is an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal to build great technical products via lean/agile methods.

Lean 94

Lean Agile B2B Metrics 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) All I can tell the folks who attended the simulcasts is that I’m not missing either the time or the money. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It’s all about the product. The only thing that matters is how good your product is. All the rest is noise. At Fab, our virtual product is our website & apps, our physical products are the merchandise we sell, and our experience product is our operations and service. Always has been. Always will be.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. ” So I’m looking at it, and the first thing I think is the design is simple. Edwin: Would I be able to attract other people if the design would be different?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220